


Maps

by themantlingdark



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-08
Updated: 2018-12-08
Packaged: 2019-09-13 21:27:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16900131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themantlingdark/pseuds/themantlingdark
Summary: Loki takes stock while Thor recovers from a near-fatal injury.





	Maps

The last sentence on the page was vaguely familiar from having been read most recently. Or seen, anyway. The sentences before it were strangers again already. Loki’s thoughts were two feet to his left, hovering over the bed to hear the labored breathing and weakly beating heart, willing them struggle onward. When he turned his head, the sight was still a shock, new and terrible no matter how many times he looked. The words on the page that he didn’t have the mind to remember were so benign in their unfamiliarity. The gap between species of unknowns was unbalancing.

 

He stared at the slack muscles in his brother’s face. Not smooth and rested, but spent. Pale with blood loss and pain. His cheeks, temples, and the sockets of his eyes were hollowing out as his body consumed its stores of fat to fight against infection and to fuel its efforts to knit torn flesh back together. He looked worse on every viewing, and the bloom of red on his bandages was forever spreading, never drying and browning, always refreshed.

 

Somehow the shorn hair made it all more horrible, though it was perhaps the only part of Thor that had never bled. It marked the beginning of the most recent round of losses. It was forced, ill-fitting, and foreign. Stripped. Meant to make him less himself and insult him. It produced that sullying effect Loki had felt before upon seeing children who’d had their heads shaved to stop lice.

 

They had stolen more than beauty when they took Thor’s hair away: he was in mourning and would not have cut it until he was finished, years from now. Their mother wouldn’t mind about the haircut, but it would look odd to the eyes of every Asgardian and would set Thor apart from his people--if he ever returned to see the few of them who were left.

 

Loki tried to read his book again but his eyes drifted down to his hands. To the bend between the index finger and the thumb where the skin folded up in parched, crepey rolls. The flesh was slowly going loose with wear and with the loss of the fat that had attended youth. All of Loki’s skin had that character now. Not old exactly, merely _not_ _young_. An endless network of creases that, when seen up close, reminded him of the reptiles that lived in sand. He knew his body had once been plump and smooth without truly remembering what it had looked like back then or when, exactly, it had ceased to be the case.

 

There was something imperfect in the machinery of life. Designed to fail. Bodies were built with some finite resource that slowly stretched thin and counted down the days. Stars burned out too, but they didn’t mind it. It was the minding that was so maddening. Oblivious dust had cooked itself in circles until things capable of thought had emerged. And those things were spurred on by their own inner workings to cook up more of themselves. Tricked by potions in their blood to enjoy sex and babies and believe in love. To seek and ascribe meaning. To think it was all leading somewhere. Or so it had seemed.

 

A month ago Loki would have said he’d seen through all feeling and was finished with it--and he would have believed himself. He was certain he could not be duped by the body’s strategic doses of self-made narcotics. By chemistry. By habit and history. By fiction. But then the blade had gone through Thor’s belly and Loki had been forced to reconsider.

 

Loki remembered setting the last stone in the gauntlet and reaching to slip it on, intending all along to keep it for himself, wanting its answers and wanting to see the fury on his brother’s features. The disappointment that would tell him Thor was still a thrall to sentiment. A fool. The expressions on Thor’s face were a kind of writing. Cartography. They illuminated for Loki the hidden contours of his brother’s heart. Told him that Thor still hoped for the best. Still trusted him. Still stupidly, stubbornly loved him. That his spirit was unbroken in spite of everything. It seemed impossible, but there it was, written in Thor’s widening eyes.

 

Unfettered by such ardor, Thanos had seen things clearly. He had suspected treachery from a trickster god all along and he’d had a knife ready for Loki’s back. Thor, ever faithful, had screamed to warn Loki, who had then shattered into a cloud of flies. In the struggle to possess the gauntlet, the blade meant for Loki had gone into his brother. A flash of silver from Rogers’ shield had cleared a path straight through Thanos’ forearms where they gripped the knife and Thor’s throat. Two jets of red had arced and then dropped from the stumps. And then everything had gone white. A deafening bolt of lightning had flowed up through Thanos’ body. A solid pillar of plasma, wider than the trunk of a thousand-year-old tree, warmer than the sun. Loki’s words had completed their orbit and bumped him on the back of the head: _and then to be reminded what real power is._

 

When the light had finally dimmed, it had once again been Rogers who saw the problem and solved it. He’d realized Thor was in shock and numb to his injury from a rush of adrenaline. He’d made Thor lie down, then taken a tiny aerosol bottle from his pocket and sprayed its contents onto Thor’s wound until a strange, webby clot had formed around the blade. Vision had flown Thor to Stark’s medical wing and begun what would unfold into six hours of robotic surgery. Loki had screamed at the sky, telling Heimdall to send him someone who’d be willing and able to give blood to his brother. Heimdall had sent Sif, then swapped places with her and come to Earth himself to provide more blood so that there would be something left on hand in case of an emergency.

 

It was breathing that was the trouble, in a terrible irony; the endless shifting of flesh never gave Thor’s wounds a chance to fully heal. The movement yielded a faint but ceaseless trickle of blood that filled the room with the stink of copper.

 

There was an ugly thing like a bridle on Thor’s head, with tiny, clear tubes that spilled oxygen into his nose to save his body the trouble of filtering out all the filthy waste that filled Midgard’s air. Thor wasn’t stable enough to make the trip to Alfheim yet, but as soon as he was able, Loki would take him there. Clean air. Real food. Healing on par with what Asgard had possessed.  

 

The book was still in Loki’s hands, its words still mute to his eyes. Its thoughts were too small and safe for what was in the room. The answers Loki needed had not yet been written down. Meaning dangled out of reach.

 

Loki told himself again that meaning was merely an invention. Relative. Fiction. A lie. It soothed him for three seconds. Then he remembered that it existed in the mind, which was a jumble of matter. Thoughts belonged to the laws of physics. But Loki couldn’t see what those laws were trying to achieve, if anything. Where were they leading, with all their contradictions? Sometimes Thor took lives and sometimes he saved them; some people tried to protect Thor’s life while others aimed to end it. Loki had been on both sides of that argument and had finally come down on the side of saving. Now he wanted to know why.

 

He sighed and abandoned his book on the table, then gently took his brother’s hand.

 

Part of him said that there was no goal, only a jumble of atoms. That consciousness and the collapse of stars occurred simultaneously and stood on equal footing. Insignificant and coincidental. But when he looked at Thor, his conviction to keep his brother breathing only increased. He couldn’t say why it mattered.

 

Perhaps Thor knew. Of the two of them, he seemed to be the one getting things right these days. Perhaps, in a way, Thor was the answer, or was leading to it. Perhaps Loki’s stubborn, inexplicable love functioned as a set of reins, leading him to value and protect a piece of the world that was on track to achieve something. Perhaps Thor wouldn’t live long enough to get to the answers himself, but he would almost certainly send other people off in the right direction. Provide them with a compass. A piece of the blueprint. Perhaps the universe was building a map and a mirror, aiming to see and know itself backward and forward through time. Not with a cheat like the infinity gems, which could instantly undo everything, but with something more lasting and stable. Something with gravity.

 

Gazing unblinking at Thor’s sleeping face, Loki could only think _here’s gravity_. An event horizon he crossed so long ago. The point of no return was likely passed the second they set eyes on each other. And time was behaving strangely as if to offer proof. The six days spent at Thor’s bedside had moved more slowly than the last six years. Each breath Thor had taken had been marked by his brother, and the gap between every exhale and inhale had stretched out for an eternity.

 

The beeping of the heart monitor had become Loki’s new clock. If it stopped, he would throw what was left of his lifetime away with it. For the first two days, the stuttering sound had plucked at his nerves. It had become a comfort once it stabilized.

 

Now the threat to Loki’s fledgling sense of purpose was the thermometer. The number was habitually climbing, being brought down by antibiotics, biding its time just long enough to lull Loki into a false sense of security, and then rising again. Vision had been in six hours ago to inject Thor with something for the latest fever. Banner had been in twelve hours before that to change bandages and administer a different blend of antibiotics. They had been winning the battles. Loki hoped that boded well for the war.

 

Beyond Bruce and Vision, only Steven had been in to visit, fresh from the shower and sporting the same sterile clothes Loki was obliged to wear. The two of them sat eyeing each other from either side of Thor’s bed with something like approval, not so much for who they were, but for who they were here for.

 

For the last five days, Loki had watched Rogers pull up a chair and take his brother’s left hand. He was always sensible enough not to speak, for which Loki was deeply grateful. Steve seemed content to sit and watch in the hope that he might happen to be there when Thor woke up and opened those eyes again. He always arrived in the middle of the night, when Loki was most nervous and life seemed most likely to slip out the door, and he stayed until dawn. It did not strike Loki as beyond the scope of possibility that Steven was acting as a tether, warmly binding Thor to life. Loki adopted the technique after Rogers’ first visit, taking Thor’s right hand when the sun set and not letting go until it rose again--if he let go of it at all.

  


When Thor finally woke, he did so slowly. His eyes fluttered open in stages. Focused first on the ceiling, then rolled in his head as he took in the rest of the room before settling on Loki’s face. When he parted his chapped lips to speak, only a rasp came out. Loki wetted a clean cloth and set it in Thor’s mouth to let him suck the moisture out without running the risk of choking.

“You look like shit,” Thor said.

“You smell like shit,” Loki smiled, blinking tears down his cheeks.

“Knife knick my guts?”

“More like mowed.”

“Mmm,” Thor grimaced, nodding once. “Drains?”

“Quite a few. They put you back together again pretty well on the inside, though. It’s the meat on the outside that won’t stay shut.”

“How long have I been out?”

“A Midgardian week.”

“Not bad,” Thor said.

“Try it without painkillers,” Loki offered, and Thor wrinkled his nose, then craned his neck to take a better look at himself.

“A little scratch like that had me out for a week?”

“The lightning you brought afterward didn’t help you,” Loki said, and Thor hummed and nodded his head. “And the lack of proper healers didn’t do you any favors either.”

“Is this food?” Thor asked, inclining his head toward a tube that disappeared into his left arm.

“What passes for it here,” Loki answered.

“Need to get to Alfheim,” Thor said, keeping his sentences short and his breaths shallow. Loki could see that it hurt Thor to stretch his side with every breath.

“That’s what I’ve been telling them. But they say you haven’t healed enough to be moved yet. And now they’re worried about your lungs.”

“That’s because the air here is like sewage.”

“Yes. Which reminds me: they need you to cough. They said it will feel awful and probably tear things open, so don’t do it until Banner and Vision get here to stop the bleeding.”

“Lovely,” Thor murmured, taking in his brother’s shadowed eyes and the tired corners of his mouth. “What have you been up to?”

“Sitting, mostly.”

Thor nodded faintly, settled back against the pillows, and fell asleep again with Loki’s hand still held in his own.

  


When his friends arrived in the room, Thor did his coughing. Dr Banner wanted him to clear his lungs after so many days of shallow breathing, hoping to reduce the risk of pneumonia. It did hurt, and it sent more blood leaking out Thor’s side where the flexing of muscles upset the already unhappy injury.

 

It was another week before all the drains came out of Thor’s wound and the bleeding finally ceased. He still had to take nourishment intravenously while the cuts to his internal organs healed. Steve continued to come to the room each night, though Thor was often awake for it now. They talked of the oddities of their worlds while Loki rested his forehead in his brother’s palm where it lay upturned on the bed, or traced the veins on Thor’s inner arm with the pads of his fingers.

 

 

Three weeks after Thor’s injury, Loki successfully argued for their departure. Thor was well enough to travel, all the necessary care could be provided on Alfheim, its healers were familiar with Asgardian bodies, its environment was almost identical to that of Asgard’s, and its food would fully meet Thor’s nutritional needs. Loki also played on everyone’s pity by adding that it was the last place in the realms where they had any living family left--a point which Thor helpfully confirmed.

 

Thor thanked his friends heartily for saving his life and putting his body back together again. Loki was fairly certain he was the only one who picked up on how desperately his brother wished to leave.

  
  


They were briefly quarantined on Alfheim while the healers there identified and eradicated a plethora of bacteria from Midgard and also from Thanos, who, over the course of millennia, had accumulated a complex and ever-evolving community of microbes on his person.

 

The rooms of Alfheim’s infirmary were small but pleasant, with large windows that looked out on the sea, smooth stone floors, plain white walls, and, best of all, big, comfortable beds. Patients’ partners were encouraged to stay with them, as it calmed both parties and thereby hastened healing. Loki stretched out on the mattress beside his brother without a word, lying still and slightly stiff, as though bracing for the impact of anger or refusal. Thor, on the mend and arguably one of the most agreeable beings in the realms, opted not to ask “what the hell and why?” about the climbing into bed or anything else. Instead, he simply smiled and took his brother’s hand, fondly pressing it until they both fell asleep.  

 

Clean air and proper food worked wonders. Thor was allowed to try eating the old fashioned way within three days. His friends had done good work: nothing leaked. Alfheim’s healers were pleasantly surprised, which was as close as they were likely to come to being impressed by Midgardian medicine.

 

When Thor was issued a clean bill of health, the siblings went to visit their uncle, who lived in a series of tents near the river and who, being their mother’s brother, was as eager to see Frigga’s crooked chin on Thor’s face as Thor and Loki were to see it on his.

 

After filling them with wine and pheasant, Freyr walked his nephews farther up the bank to a solitary tent on a raised platform of wood. Everything within was of oak, cotton, silk, and wool. Soft and quiet. The thin woven walls let the sounds of dusk slip through. The gurgling of the stream combined with the quiet singing of toads and the wary voices of owls to form a kind of lullaby.

 

“How’s your side?” Loki asked, seeing the careful way Thor pulled his shirt over his head as they undressed to go to sleep.

“It’s like a bruise or a muscle pull now. Only bothers me when I bother it, which is easy enough to avoid.”

The fresh scar on Thor’s left flank was shiny, pink, and puckered, but the fact that it was no longer anywhere near bleeding made it one of the most satisfying sights Loki had ever seen. The little white line below it, left years ago by Loki’s knife, was both a sting and a comfort. It reminded Loki of his own failures while it spoke of his brother’s capacity to forgive and mend.

 

Thor was lying on his right side in bed with his hands tucked under the pillow while Loki was still absentmindedly unlacing his leggings.

“Did you take off my beard?” Thor asked, and Loki nodded once with what looked a great deal like approval of his own handiwork.

“It was too big without long hair to balance it,” Loki claimed. “And it was hard to see your coloring beneath it, in case you went pale--or _green_.”

“And you’ve always hated kissing me when I have one,” Thor finished.

Loki smoothed his face into a mask of innocence that was immediately undermined by the reddening of his cheeks.

“Not _hated_ ,” Loki said, stretching out in front of his brother and pulling the sheets up to their ribs. “It just isn’t ideal.”

“I know,” Thor admitted. “It scuffs you up… and I can’t feel anything through it.”

“Then you’re welcome,” Loki smiled.

Thor snorted and said, “Likewise.”

Loki softly ran his nails up and down the center of Thor’s chest, pleasantly scratching the skin while he stared at his brother’s bare jaw.

“Actually it was so that we could see your facial expressions clearly,” Loki murmured. “Catch your jaw flexing. To let us know when the painkillers were wearing off.” Loki shook his head and caught Thor’s eyes peering intently at his face. “Let’s not think about it,” he said, and reached up to trace Thor’s collarbone.

“What would be better?” Thor asked.

Loki smiled and cupped the side of Thor’s neck, then slowly slid his hand back and up over the base of Thor’s skull. He felt the scruff of Thor’s hair briefly catching between his fingers before it slid through and brushed his palm.

“You’ve had a rough month too,” Thor noted. “We could put out the lamps. Get some real sleep.”

Loki attempted to purse his lips disapprovingly, but the effort was spoiled by his smile.

“Have plans?” Thor asked, a playful note of feigned innocence in his voice.

Loki kissed Thor’s chin and the tip of his nose. Traced the shell of his ear with his fingertips and lightly tugged the lobe. Broke into a helpless grin and hid his face beneath Thor’s right cheek, burrowing into the pillow. Thor laughed softly and reached to run his hand up and down Loki’s back in slow, smooth passes until the muscles gradually relaxed and Loki’s body shifted with the movements of his arm. Whether Loki was awake or asleep, Thor couldn’t tell without asking or looking, and the former would mean waking Loki up for certain. He leaned his head back and turned to his right until he could see the side of Loki’s face. His eyes were open and he was still smiling. Thor nipped his ear and pecked a trail of kisses across his cheekbone, pressing in harder as he neared Loki’s mouth, hoping to nudge his brother’s face out from under his own.

 

Loki couldn’t help but stare for a moment, the way he always did when he saw Thor after an absence, even if that absence had only lasted seconds.

“How can you smile?” Loki whispered, and saw the grin on his brother’s lips widen.

“People generally do when they get what they want,” Thor answered. His lips had had to fight their way free from the grin to properly shape the words.

Loki huffed quietly through his nose, both at his own unwarranted good fortune and at his brother’s naked constancy.

“How can you want this?” Loki asked, face darkening and furrowing with some storm that Thor had not seen on the horizon. “ _Me_ ,” Loki clarified.

“I love-”

“But what does that mean for _love_?” Loki asked. He seemed almost to be talking to himself. His eyes were wide, focused somewhere between his face and his brother’s, in some no man’s land of thought that Thor would have to fish him out of. “If the unworthy have it while so many worthy go without, then what’s it good for? It is just chemistry, isn’t it? Trying to trick us into something.”

“Into what?”

“Breeding.”

“Oh,” Thor nodded. “And we never fall in love with words or paintings or the dead strangers who made them.”

Loki frowned and sighed. “The older I get, the less I understand.”

Thor rubbed his brother’s back again and patted his bottom.

“Is _unworthy_ the way you see yourself these days?” Thor asked. “Unlovable?”

“Is there any reason it shouldn’t be?”

Thor narrowed his eyes at the evasion. Not a denial.

“I can’t see what good could come of loving me,” Loki continued. “From your side, at least, or any side but my own--I have no doubt it benefits me.”

“If I didn’t love you,” Thor began, looking at his brother with a face that was a smile on the left and a grimace on the right, “and if Mother hadn’t loved you, the realms would most likely have ended already. Odin would have executed you and there wouldn’t have been a way for me to get to Malekith without your aid. I hardly would have broken you out of prison if I didn’t care for you--I’d have gotten your help another way. I wouldn’t have trusted you enough to believe you were dead, and then you wouldn’t have been able to sneak off and get Father out of our way. I wouldn’t have stopped Thanos a month ago. He would have put a knife in your back and a gauntlet on his hand and then we’d all be gone now.”

Loki frowned and reddened, face crumpling, shaking his head. He looked, in Thor’s experienced estimation, no more than ten seconds from tears. Thor sighed, raised his hand, and slapped Loki’s ass as sharply as he could.

“What the hell?” Loki yelped.

“You were barrelling down the wrong track,” Thor shrugged. “I derailed you.”

“That hurt!”

“Well it hardly would have worked otherwise,” Thor said, smiling brightly. “And anyway, I’ll make it up to you.”

He pushed Loki onto his front and then climbed down the bed, throwing the sheets back and sitting astride Loki’s legs. “Here,” Thor said, and leaned down to blow a fast jet of air through his lips, puckering them in a near-whistle so that the gust would be cool. “How’s that?” he asked.

“Still burning.”

“Then it suits you,” Thor laughed. “I don’t pretend you’re not like fire, Loki. I know you’ll burn things-- _me_ , sometimes. But for every house that burns down, there are hundreds of thousands that don’t; millions of suppers cooked over hearths; countless winters made warm.”

Loki said nothing, only took a deep, slow breath and carefully let it out again. Thor leaned down and licked the red welt his hand had left on Loki’s backside, then blew on it again. “Better?” he asked.

“Getting there.”

Loki felt his brother shift and then the bed was shaking faintly. When Loki bent to the side and looked back over his shoulder, he discovered that Thor had his cock aimed at the hand-print and was jerking himself off with adolescent efficiency. The weightless patter of semen hitting Loki’s skin was soothing in itself, and then Thor dragged the silky head of his cock through it, painting the drops onto Loki’s stung flesh before he bent down to blow cool air across it again. When Thor’s come started to get sticky, he licked Loki clean and then blew a long parting-breath out over the skin, which had begun to fade to its traditional peaches-and-cream.

“Can you turn over?” Thor asked, and Loki rolled onto his back while his cock bobbed and swayed above his belly. “Fast or slow?” Thor asked.

“I’m flattered that you think slow is an option.”  

“It’s been a long time,” Thor nodded, and Loki gave a long, grateful blink of agreement.

Thor licked his lips, licked the head of Loki’s cock, and slid his mouth down to the base. Loki’s legs were bracing already, raising his hips, so Thor held still a moment. He felt the tickling brush of fur against his face--a pleasure he always missed when he had a beard--and breathed in the softly spiced scent of Loki’s skin and the hint of ocean in his sweat. After a dozen slow passes of Thor’s lips, Loki gasped and arched. His cock jerked in his brother’s mouth, wildly at first and then in weaker, more widely spaced increments. The jets of seed faded to a trickle and slid out against Thor’s tongue.

 

Thor dropped down onto his side and arranged Loki into a matching curve in front of him, nesting their bodies in a drowsy S. He kissed the back of his brother’s neck and then bit him on the shoulder for emphasis.

“I know,” Loki said softly.

“Good,” Thor breathed, and kissed the center of the ring left by his teeth.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> please don't comment or repost


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